My American Idol sense was way off this week as Vanessa took the collar and became the first finalist to set sail for home. In fact, only one of my bottom three was in the actual grouping: Kimberly Locke. I'll have to fine tune the meh meter for next week.

As happy as I am to see Elizabeth Smart at home, and as much sense as the Amber Alert thing seems to make, I find it odd that we're putting this state of the art system over a road and bridge infrastructure that is anything but. Then again, if I had my way we'd stop building 10 lane superhighways and start with more trains.

Speaking of trains, the MBTA announced today that a ride on the T will go up to $1.25 in January. The price for everything else - bus, commuter rail, boats, etc. - will also go up. Problem being that the MBTA is operating under a huge debt load (debt service currently accounts for 30 percent of the operating budget) and is getting less help from the state given its budgetary mess and the slow distancing that Beacon Hill's done from the MBTA over the last decade.

As much as this sucks, it's still a cheap ride compared to New York ($2), Philly ($2.25), Atlanta ($1.75), and Chicago ($1.50). Can't get on the DC Metro website, BART is mileage-based and thus hard to tell, and LA's Metrolink is more of a commuter rail (from what I can tell, locals feel free to correct).

The other problem here is that ridership is down (though that hardly ever seems the case when I'm trying to get somewhere). Nothing in the article I read this morning suggest why this is the case; I suppose the economic downturn is an obvious reason, but I wonder if it's the main one.

Not much else going on, though between the Hockey East playoffs and tomorrow's America East title game, I'll either be very exhilarated or pissed off beyond compare by this time Sunday.